"It's Counter-Strike - The legendary LAN game!"

This is the myth; Counter-Strike. The game that (together with Diablo) made LAN as popular as it is today...

What has made Counter-Strike as popular as it is today is three things;

Team work (Very much team work is needed) Many maps... Very many maps (hundreds... no, thousands of maps) And it's FREE if you can download it (you WILL need broadband for that)

GAME TYPES: There are three game types that are the mostly common, and they depend on the map name; a map that is a cs_ map, cant be a de_ map, but what is a cs_ and de_ map, you ask. Well, here is a short explanation of the game types: cs_mapname - The cs maps is where the Counter-Terrorists have to rescue a number of hostages and then escort them to a hostage rescue point, that's often in the area where the CT's start. If you shoot the hostages, you will lose money... de_mapname - The terrorists have to plant a bomb in a special place in these maps, the CT's must stop the Terrorists from doing so. If the terrorists is able to plant the bomb anyway, a CT can always find it and disarm it. as_mapname - Not so very popular, but still pretty common. One of the CT's are picked out to be a VIP, the terrorists goal is to assassinate the VIP, and the CT's goal is to protect him and lead him to the VIP safety zone. There are many more types of maps, but these are the most common.

YOU MENTIONED MONEY UP THERE, WHAT CAN I USE IT FOR?: The money is used for buying weapons and accessories! You can buy a lot of weapons, kevlar vests, smoke grenades, night vision kits. The most things a CT or Terrorist ever wanted to use.

Now, here's the scores:

GRAPHICS: 5 - Not the best graphics that exists out there... Pretty blocky with a lot of bugs. A person goes into the wall when he's shot? No, I don't think so...

SOUNDS: 7 - Pretty good weapon sounds, and many levels come with their own sounds that you install like dogs barking and wind blowing, the radio sounds are also very good ''Cover me!'', ''Fire in the hole!''. There are no background music, but due to the low system requirements, it's possible to have an MP3 or CD player open as you run it...

CONTROLS: 7 - The controls is nothing special; the usual shooter controls; W, A, S, D to move around and mouse to look and shoot, but they work just fine... It respond good to the mouse and buttons...

DIFFICULTY: X - It all depends on how good your opponents are, if you are up against a gang of masters, it's a 10. If you are up against a newbie... a 1.

INTERNET COMPABILITY: 5 - Never really got a chance to test this... But I don't like this very much... When I try to connect to a server it only says that I've got the wrong C-S version... But when I use the update program to update to the newest version it says ''Your Counter-Strike version is up to date''... You can also download the whole game from www.counter-strike.net (the games official website), but don't even think of it with a Modem; the full mod is 121Mb big...

LONG LIVING: 10 - With the thousands and thousands of maps to this game, it's almost impossible to get tired of it! When you come to a LAN there's always someone who has downloaded a few maps for you to play with. A zipped map can be anything between 90Kb and 5 megs big.

TOTAL: 8 - This is a good game, a very good game. But some things are really lowering this score. Like the bugs that you go straight through a wall when you get shot. And that the hostages can't swim... Or that there are no bots with the game; you have to sit alone if you are at home with no Internet, but you can always download some free bots. The reason that I gave this game an 8 was because two things; The game don't need the latest technology to run, I've seen people run it on 400 MHz computers... And that it is so cheap as it is - you can get this game, together with three other games for the price of one, good good. :-) So my advice to you is; BUY IT AS FAST AS YOU CAN!And play it... forever! Have a nice day!